


What If

by captainoutoftime



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: I promise, Multi, everyone dies, only sads here, this is not a happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 01:30:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2330270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainoutoftime/pseuds/captainoutoftime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's worst nightmare isn't freezing to death. It's not dying at all...</p>
            </blockquote>





	What If

They lose Clint first, and in hindsight, Steve supposes it’s logical.   
He was forty five, still running missions. Still acting as if he were thirty. The bad guys never get old, do they? Only a second and a half too slow. Great agent. Good guy. Strike team Delta. Avenger.

The phrases get tossed around like they’re nothing, like they don’t mean anything. Steve feels oddly numb. Natasha does not- no one feels the absence where the archer should be as much as she does. Steve’s never seen her cry before, but she stands in front of his casket, weeping silently. Her hands clench around his bow, knuckles white. Moving forward slowly, feeling like he’s wading through thigh-deep water, Steve rests his hand on her shoulder. One solitary sob manages to escape her firm control, and the sound resonates through the room as if it were ripped from her very soul. With hands that tremble, she places the bow by his side and turns, hiding her face in Steve’s chest. He holds her, shields her as much as possible so that she can let herself grieve in relative privacy. Steve still feels numb. He’s waiting for a set of shuffling footsteps and and ‘aww, coffee’, to sound somewhere, anywhere except the casket where his friend lies.

* * *

 

Bruce is next. Steve feels something like relief mixed in with his grief.   
He knows that the suicide attempt Bruce had confessed to was not the first, nor the last. He’d been ready to go for some time now. Still, it was natural causes that claimed him. Aneurysm. Right in the lobe he and Jane suspected the Hulk resided. Steve misses his quiet presence already, but in a way, he envies the man. Bruce and he had shared similar worries- would their conditions keep them alive forever? One question is answered.

Tony and Jane are inconsolable. Even Thor’s comforting presence does nothing to ease her pain. Dark circles rim under her red eyes, evidence that she has not been sleeping. She sets a picture frame beside him- the ‘family’ he’d known in his later years. Her tiny frame shakes in Thor’s arms, and when she gets up to speak, she manages only a few sentences. Tony’s grief is concealed somewhat by shock, as if he still can not believe that his best friend and lab partner is truly gone. He tucks Bruce’s glasses into the pocket of his very favorite purple shirt. A woman with dark hair, shot through with streaks of gray, stands silently by the edge of the crowd, and when everyone else has gone, sits by the coffin for a few moments, leaving him nothing but a few words and a soft kiss.

* * *

 

Steve can still feel Tony’s heart beating too fast under his hand as he stands at the inventor’s ceremony. It’s ostentatious, and Steve finds the whole thing rather tacky. Tony would’ve loved it. His coffin is hot-rod red and gold. Steve’s suit is rumpled and he is disheveled because this one hurts too much to think about and he only got out of bed because Pepper wanted him there and because he had to say goodbye didn’t he but maybe he doesn’t have the strength to say it.

He usually refuses to cry in public but he’s lost control today. Jane rubs his shoulder but he can hardly feel that she’s there because he swears that he can still feel the irregular heartbeat of the manic, stupid, irreverent, narcissistic man he called his best friend. The pain in the ass left Steve American-flag boxers, a cooler full of ice, and a chest full of old tapes, old photographs and a note reading only ‘You’d better drink my good scotch, you boyscout’. Steve laughed through his tears when he read it. Pepper wears pieces of his arc reactor arranged artfully into a heart-shaped necklace. Natasha holds her hand. Pepper grips the pendant like she’s trying to squeeze life back into it. People stare, but Steve can’t find the strength to get up from his seat. He stays there for hours after dark, and god bless him, Thor waits silently by his side until he’s ready to go.

* * *

 

His judgement is blurring. He takes unnecessary risks on missions. Steve gets hurt accidentally-on-purpose. He gets suspended from duty. He fails a psych evaluation. He tries to end it all. He fails. He tries again. Pepper cries. He promises to stop. He lies. He tries again. He fails.

* * *

 

Pepper and Natasha die on the same day. Both heads of copper hair are faded, filled with varying shades of gray. Natasha wears her Black Widow suit, and even at her age, she looks good. They perform her ceremony in Russian. Pepper wears her usual business clothes and sensible heels. Steve sobs- selfish, selfish tears. He’s truly alone now. Jane and Thor live on Asgard mostly, and though they invited him to visit all the time, he just felt wrong on another planet. He is a man of his country, of his planet.

Two of strongest women Steve has ever known are gone and he can’t anymore. He struggles to get out of bed most days. His hair shines pure gold, his body is as strong and youthful as ever it was, but he feels aged and weary. This time he lets Jane talk him into going to Asgard. From there, it is easier to pretend the team is still alive and young and strong, laughing in the tower, waiting for him to come home to them.

Decades pass by. Steve gradually feels more at ease on Asgard because home hurts too much. It aches hollowly to be there. As it turns out, Asgard’s troops could use a good captain. Thor and Jane age at roughly the same rate- she says the apples of youth taste lovely. She names her first son Erik. Her second, she names Robert, and there is no question as to why. They have two daughters afterwards, and sometimes the foursome reminds Steve what it feels like to be happy. He dotes on his nieces and nephews. He tells them stories about their other aunts and uncles, the ones they’ve never met. Centuries pass. Steve hasn’t gone back to Earth since ten years after Pepper and Natasha died. He’s starting to think he couldn’t handle it if he did.

* * *

 

Even Asgardians, however, die. Thor clings to Jane’s hand as she fades. She is calm, and finds the grace to be the one reassuring him, with all the serenity of the queen she has become. It shakes the very foundations of Asgard, and its heart, both to see the king weeping and to know that their queen is dead. For once, Steve must be the strong one. He braids his nieces’ hair, he comforts his nephews, both of whom want to sob, but sit on the cusp of manhood, and want to be strong like their father. Like he used to be, Steve supposes. Thor becomes quiet. Mjolnir does not leave the place he set it down by Jane’s bedside. Steve isn’t sure if that’s because he can’t move it or because he won’t.

He dies, too, only a while after. Everyone insists that he missed her too much to live. Steve is sure that it was just his time, now that Erik is of age. Thoughtful in life, as so in death. Steve sobs in earnest this time. His last companion is gone. Erik ascends the throne, wise beyond his years. He has his mother’s wisdom and his father’s courage. Asgard could not ask more of a king. Steve tells the last remnants of family he has that he’s going to visit Earth again. Only his youngest niece seems to realize what that means. Luka polishes his shield and hands it to him, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and says goodbye. Brave as ever she was, she cries silently and does not ask him to stay. Thank god for that.

New York is unrecognizable. Steve walks slowly down the streets, and even in his uniform, with his shield, most don’t seem to recognize him. That’s all the better. He doesn’t want a funeral. He’s seen too many. The city is in disarray, there are weapons he’s never seen the like of before, but he fights. It’s all he’s ever known. The Captain does not choose a side, not assume a command. He finds peace in pursuing his true purpose. Steve protects the innocent- no more.

In an area that used to be known as Brooklyn, something glowing and beeping slides towards a scared, thin little boy. Another protects him.   
Steve dives on top of the grenade and closes his eyes. The first thing he hears is Peggy’s voice, a smile in her tone, and she says only one thing.

"You’re late."

When he wakes from the nightmare, Steve is shaking like a frightened child, screaming at the top of his lungs. _Please no please no please no please no._ This dream is infinitely worse than dreams of the ice, or of Bucky. This dream haunts him like nothing else. When he wakes from this nightmare, nothing can soothe him, not even the knowledge that even if it does become reality, his end does come.


End file.
